EOM, the industrial employers of the 19th and prewar 20th century were horrible. People often did not get paid. Sometimes they got coupons that were valid only at employer's shop for horribly overprices basic goods. Women before 1920 were not paid, employers abused them, raped them, beat them up. Workers often rebelled and killed managers and foremen. Army or national guards have to be called in to suppress the riots and killed dozens people. We have not seen anything on these scale after 1945.
School violence were also in the past. Charles University in Prague in medieval times had share of them since 1348. Professors were lynched, one student killed three in rage in 1480's, so on. In 1945 high school girl put revenge on her classmates in small Bohemian city by snitching them to local Gestapo fabricating story that they were supporting partisans. Gestapo shoot them outside the school. In 1936 teachers were responsible for drowning of 31 children, the parents lynched the teachers... I do not get the notion where people would claim the past was always better.
Youth were always considered wicked, spoiled, etc. Emperor Octavian complained about lose morals of Roman population, especially youth so he forbid public kissing and enforced censorship. Renaissance zealots complained how much the youth is rotten due all the social changes and upheaval of the era. Any century, any generation will whine and complain about the youth and idealize the long lost time.